My Life. My Views

Is it really a woman’s fault!?? I mean, being born a woman! Is it a crime? For which women are made to suffer, right from their childhood and the suffering doesnt stop there… It goes on.. Personally… And now, also professionally…

All these questions were attacking my mind, when I saw the news yesterday… A major IT giant decides to ban women from working in the night shift… From the onset, it may look like a pretty safe and natural thing to do… afterall, with incidents like the rape and subsequent murder of a girl, while she was being taken by the cab to her office, do make it seem like if women are not allowed in the night shift, it will solve the problem! It does NOT!

I am very sorry to say, but this is merely a reactive approach to the problem! The policy makers, in this case, have very conveniently chosen to overlook a major issue here! That, of the professional rights of women! This is, by all means, gender discrimination… which is not expected of big IT companies.

Not just that, those who have worked in shifts are aware of a certain component in their salaries, which is the “Hardship allowance” – u get this when u work in odd timings, say night shifts. It may sound trivial, but the monthly salary from this does form a pretty sizeable chunk of the net salary. By imposing this rule, you are unfortunately, also robbing women the right of earning hardship allowance! Well… so, women will soon be the least earners of their teams! Not a very healthy thing to think of… Provided, HR of the companies take notice of this, and come up with an alternative solution.

Anshul, don’t you use that there is something wrong in the argument that women better stay at home before they get raped?

How about making this world a little safer?

Btw, I once worked for a company who rented drivers who went back and forth between a train station and the company every day, for two hours in the morning and two in the evening, just because they thought it would mean asking to much from their employees to walk 20 minutes. Think about that as an alternative, if you mean to raise the security issue.

On the same note: You probably heard about the discussion in 2006 about the East of Germany being to dangerous for black World Cup tourists to go there, because of the number of Neo-Nazis in the East where unemployment rates are at 30% in some areas?

What do you think Germany decided (or should have decided) to do:

A – ban black people from matches that took place in the (formerly) Eastern German cities, only for their safety?

Hi Anshul, I know what u talking about… That is exactly my point! such a policy is reactive! Just because somebody gets murdered or raped, you stop them from coming in the night! This is not attacking the problem in hand – that of the safety of women!